Disclaimer – I own no rights to the Bioshock universe. And I can't wait to own a copy of "Bioshock Infinite."
A/N – Would you kindly forgive me for the long hiatus between chapters?
The Bleach Doctor – Glad for your review. Keep reading!
Jack reached down and felt the green blades between his fingers. He plucked a handful out of the ground and examined it. There was no doubt. They'd just jumped from a speeding monorail and rolled down a grassy hill.
Ahead, he could see vegetation. Looking through the gaps between treetops, he could see the walls and ceiling of the transparent glass dome, and through that he could see a shark swimming by.
The usually stoic Dr. Langford was standing and waving her arms, a proud smile beaming on her face. She indicated a gate, the ornate lettering above the entrance reading "Arcadia."
"Ladies and gentlemen," she said, "won't you please step into my gardens?"
Jack stood up, brushed off the seat of his pants, and then offered a hand to Teagan, who smiled as he helped her to her feet. He then extended his arm to Evelyn, but she was already springing to her feet, waving away Jack's hand in her typical fashion, though her previously cold gaze had thawed considerably.
As Jack followed Langford through the gate, he looked around himself, taking the time to marvel at the various exotic plant life around him. Though most of the flora was new to him, he recognized them as being indigenous to different continents across the globe. They blended together surprisingly well, and their combined fragrance made an intoxicating aroma. Jack was startled by a pair of bees that went buzzing by his face.
"On the surface, Andrew Ryan once bought a piece of forest land for his own amusement," Langford explained. "The community tried to force him to make it a public park, insisting it was the property of God and should be available to everyone. Of course, Ryan didn't believe any of that, so he lit it on fire so everyone could watch it burn. When he came to me, he told me he wanted to be able to say . . ."
Here she broke into a weak imitation of Ryan's strong Scottish burr.
"'It washn't God who planted the sheeds of Arcadia. It wash me.' Never mind that I was actually the one who did all the work."
"I don't like this," Evelyn said, looking nervously at the brush all around them. "We're out in the open, and any number o' t'ings could be hiding in the bushes. I feel like we're walking into an ambush."
"We can cut through the storage shed," Langford said, pointing. A trace of disappointment was evident in her voice. "That will keep us out of the open and take us to the other side of the park."
It was pitch dark inside the shed. Fragments of broken glass lay shattered at the spot below what was once a light bulb, and everyone could barely see an inch in front of their face until Evelyn and Teagan lit flashlights to pierce the darkness.
Lucky, in the rear, took off his dirtied fedora to dab the perspiration on his brow away with a handkerchief.
"Who crawls in my garden?" a low voice whispered.
A bladed hook swung down through the back of his head and exited through his face. He was hoisted off the ground.
Everyone turned, nervously, only seeing each other and noticing that Lucky had vanished.
Pancho felt tiny bits of ceiling crumble and land on his head. Then someone was breathing down his neck and whispering in his ear, "Adios, ammo bandito."
He tried to scream, but no sound came out.
The hook went through his belly button and made an incision up his stomach.
Up in front, Lucky's body dropped in front of Teagan and Evelyn. There was a bleeding, gaping hole where most of his face should have been.
Teagan screamed, backing up and nearly stepping in Pancho's opened belly.
More dust and debris fell from above.
The flashlight beams jumped to the ceiling.
"Spiders!" Evelyn yelled.
Splicers, sharp meat hooks strapped to their ankles and wrists, were climbing in and out of a hole in the roof, swarming over the ceiling and walls, their instruments somehow enabling them to climb around like insects.
Evelyn fired two panicked blasts from her shotgun at the ceiling. The crawling splicers just laughed in response.
Suddenly, Jack felt like time was slowing down. Everything seemed to freeze before his eye.
A bolt of electricity from his fingers was enough to light the room for a few seconds. In that time, he pulled the revolver he was carrying and aimed it. The first bullet caught the splicer directly above him in the head, and he moved out of the way just as the splicer collapsed and landed beside him. There were three splicers a little further along the ceiling. He managed to hit each one of them squarely in the head as well, then turn and shoot a splicer on the wall who was reaching out for him.
Another splicer leaped, flying towards Evelyn, his hook arching towards her chin. The bullet stopped him in midair, throwing him to the ground an inch from Evelyn's feet.
Jack exhaled as the other spider splicers retreated through the hole in the ceiling.
"I didn't know you coul' do tha'," Evelyn said, her voice coming out in a soft wheeze.
"Neither did I," Jack said, equally breathless.
"Tha' boy o' yours has real talent, miss," Atlas' voice crackled through the radio. "He shouldn't be keepin' it under a bushel. Boyo, when a Big Daddy sees you comin', he ought to run t'e other way."
Teagan bolted for the nearest door.
Teagan had just caught a breath of fresh, garden air, when her sister's hand clasped firmly down on her shoulder.
"Stop!"
Streaming from one tree to another, just at the tip of Teagan's nose, was a beam of pinkish light.
Evelyn swung the barrel of her shotgun through it and the light shorted out, a dart following the stream it had made and hitting the next tree with a thwack, quivering.
Another shotgun clicked, and a strangely level voice said, "Hold it right there."
Everyone slowly looked up into a square, chiseled face, which looked a little worse for wear, but still healthy. He was trembling a little bit as he kept the shotgun pointed at Evelyn's face.
"You're not splicers?" he said.
"Just barely," Evelyn replied. "Not one o' us has had more 'an a plasmid or two."
The man lowered his gun.
"Me and the missus haven't seen anyone who wasn't spliced out of their mind since the incident at Kashmir's on New Year's Eve."
His voice was totally even, soothing and pleasant. They were very reassuring qualities.
"We've just come from that way," Evelyn said. "We're tryin' to get to t'e other side o' Rapture, to Hephaestus."
"You'd better come inside. Too many splicers around here right now. Follow me, please."
The stranger slung the shotgun over his shoulder and stepped back, gesturing towards a small shack beside a radio tower. Once the group passed him, he hammered a clunky device on a spike into the nearest tree. There was the groan of a spring being pulled back, and then a pinkish light glowed from the trap rivet onto the next tree.
There was a large sign next to the shack, displaying the logo of Rapture Radio.
An attractive lady, about the stranger's age, waited inside, tidying things.
"You'll be safe here for a while," the man with the shotgun said. "We can offer you shelter, but not our food and water. My wife and I like to be hospitable, but we can't be that hospitable."
"We always like to offer our kindness to strangers," his wife said, in a pleasant voice that complimented his own. "At least, in this world-gone-mad day and age."
"Your voice sounds familiar," Evelyn remarked.
The man cleared his throat.
"What's a matter, Mary?" he said boldly.
"I'm just not sure how I feel about the Little Sisters, Jim," the woman replied.
"Don't you know? Why, they're the glue that holds Rapture together."
Evelyn's face instantly took on a look of disgust.
"I'm Jim."
"And I'm Mary."
Then in unison, "Together we're the voice of Rapture Radio."
"You're the ones responsible for those tatty propaganda pieces always playin' over t'e speakers."
Jim looked sadly at his wife and took a seat.
"It's funny how you don't think of it as propaganda when you actually believe it. We were convinced we were doing this stinking colony a public service."
"That was before we were told we weren't allowed to play anything by Anna Culpepper or Grace Holloway anymore, and that we had to play more tripe by that homicidal ham Sander Cohen."
She went over to a corner and put a record on. The small space was filled with the sound of Noel Coward's voice moaning "Twentieth Century Blues."
"Of course, now, everything's set up to play Diane McClintock's little 'Rapture Reminders' and Andrew Ryan telling his life story every few moments, thanks to the good people at Rapture Central Computing."
"The roughest part is having to listen to those dreadful sketches we recorded," Jim said. "It's hard to believe we actually said that shit now."
He laughed bitterly.
"You know the funniest part? Even after all those skits we did about not worrying about the side effects of ADAM, Mary and I never touched a drop ourselves."
Mary's eyes were following Jack, who was pacing nervously in a corner. Now Jim eyed him curiously as well.
"We haven't introduced you to our friend Jack Wynand yet," Evelyn said.
"I'm not familiar with the name," Jim said.
"You shouldn't be," Evelyn said, a smug grin on her luscious lips. "He's barely been in Rapture more 'n a day."
Mary dropped a glass she'd been dusting, smashing it to pieces. Jim's eyes opened wide.
"You mean . . .?"
"That's right," Evelyn said. "He's a regular Johnny Topside."
"We heard Ryan going off about an intruder over the speakers," Mary said.
"It gets better," Evelyn continued. "Wait 'til you hear why we're going to Hephaestus."
"And why is that?" Jim asked.
"We're going to assassinate Andrew Ryan," Teagan answered.
Jim and Mary reacted in surprise again, and then Jim broke into a chuckle.
"Well, an enemy of Andrew Ryan's is a friend of ours. Mary, get our friends some drinks."
Just then, there came the loud sound of a dart being fired from a trap rivet. It was followed by another coming from the other side of the shack, and then another from yet another direction.
Jim grabbed his shotgun, and Mary reached into the cushions of the sofa and pulled out a Tommy gun.
Twitch jumped out of the way as a splicer swung through the window nearest his head with a pipe wrench.
Jim aimed and fired. He ran to the broken window, resting the barrel of the gun on the sill and aiming at the other splicer shambling towards them.
The rat-a-tat-tat of Mary's shotgun sounded from nearer the opposite window.
"Run now," Jim said. "Mary and I will cover you. Just tell Andrew Ryan we said 'hi' when you see him."
"But . . ."
Evelyn, Teagan, and Touch were reloading their own weapons.
"Don't argue with the nice people, honey," Evelyn said.
Mary pushed a side door open and Evelyn ran through it, blasting away with her gun as she did. The others soon followed.
"Thank you," Jack whispered.
"Oh, and a Rapture Reminder for you," Jim said back. "Mind yourselves if you plan on passing through Fort Frolic. Sander Cohen's unofficially taken ownership of the neighborhood. Likes to put on his creepy plays at the Fleet Hall."
"Cohen still puts on plays?" Evelyn said. "Is there anyone left who even wants to watch?"
"That doesn't stop him," Jim said. "From what we hear, he always has his own 'captive' audience."
A/N – Next chapter, if I get around to it, will be "Death in Arcadia."